Buying a Historic Home in New Orleans

The styles you will actually be shown

New Orleans housing stock is specific, and the vocabulary is worth learning because it tells you what you are buying into structurally. The Creole cottage sits at the sidewalk with no hallway, four rooms opening into each other, and a steep side-gabled roof. The shotgun runs one room deep front to back with no hall, and comes as a single, a double, or a camelback with a second story added over the rear rooms only. The Creole townhouse is the French Quarter and Marigny form, masonry, multi-story, with a carriageway and rear courtyard.

Greek Revival brought symmetry, heavy columns and wide entablatures to the Garden DistrictGarden District Luxury Homes in the antebellum decades. Italianate followed with segmental arches, bracketed cornices and ornate cast iron. Eastlake and Queen Anne Victorians added turned spindlework, gable ornament and asymmetry, and they dominate parts of Uptown and the Irish Channel. Arts and Crafts bungalows fill the early twentieth century blocks. The raised center-hall cottage, lifted on piers with a full gallery, is the form that handled water best and is priced accordingly.

Each style carries its own inspection profile. Pier-and-beam construction means foundation movement and access to the underfloor space. Original single-pane windows mean weight, glazing and storm-protection questions. Slate and clay tile roofs cost several times what an asphalt roof costs to repair, and insurers treat them differently.

HDLC and the Certificate of Appropriateness

The Historic District Landmarks Commission regulates exterior work in New Orleans local historic districts under the city code. If your property is in one of those districts, alterations visible from the public right of way generally require a Certificate of Appropriateness before the Department of Safety and Permits will issue a building permit. Routine maintenance and true in-kind repair usually do not, but the line between in-kind repair and alteration is narrower than owners expect, and replacing rather than repairing a historic element is often what crosses it.

Review runs at two levels. Straightforward work, and work that matches what is already there, can be approved by commission staff without a public hearing, and HDLC operates an expedited path that can turn eligible applications around in a few business days. Substantial alterations, new construction and demolition go to the full commission at a public hearing, where neighbors may appear. Commission decisions can be appealed to the City Council.

Two clarifications that save people trouble. Interior renovation is not HDLC’s concern, so a gut of the inside without touching the exterior is a different project entirely. And the French Quarter is not under HDLC at all: the Vieux Carré Commission has jurisdiction there under its own rules, which are stricter. Since district boundaries and review requirements do change, we confirm the current status of a specific address rather than relying on what applied to a neighbor’s project.

The honest version of historic tax credits

Buyers hear that New Orleans historic homes come with tax credits and assume it applies to them. Usually it does not, and we would rather you hear that from us before you build it into your budget.

Louisiana’s State Commercial Tax Credit and the federal twenty percent rehabilitation tax credit both apply to income-producing certified historic structures. A house you live in is not income-producing, so neither one is available for the renovation of your own home. Louisiana did run a separate State Residential Tax Credit for owner-occupied historic properties, and that program expired on December 31, 2017.

What that leaves for an owner-occupant is materially different from what the phrase suggests. If your plan involves a rental, a mixed-use building or a commercial conversion, the income-producing credits are genuinely worth examining with a tax professional and the State Historic Preservation Office, and the process has certification steps that must happen in order before work begins. If you are buying a house to live in, budget the renovation on its own merits.

What to do during your inspection period

On any historic property we want four things confirmed before the inspection deadline passes. Whether the address is in an HDLC district or under the Vieux Carré Commission, and what that means for the specific work you have in mind. Whether prior work was permitted, because unpermitted alterations become your problem at resale and can complicate insurance. What the roof is, how old it is, and what a carrier will say about it. And an insurance quote on the actual address, since older construction and older roofs are where quotes come back badly.

We also push for a structural evaluation rather than relying on the general inspection alone. On a hundred-year-old pier-and-beam house the general inspector will tell you there is movement. What you need to know is whether it is settled and stable or active, and that is a different professional.